Escape from Europe: Part 1

I've decided to tell our story in several parts, both from JD's perspective and mine. Part 1 includes our actions and thoughts on Thursday and Friday of last week.

JD's perspective:

Background: This was intended to be a relatively simple business trip. My colleage, Tiffany, and I were slated to travel to London on Monday the 12, work at our client site on Tuesday through Thursday, and travel home on Friday the 16th. Easy, right? It turned out to be slightly more involved than that.

Thursday April 15

8:30 AM: We are in our cab on the way from our hotel to Kings Cross Train Station (where we catch the train to go to the client site), when we hear a quick blurb about “disruptions at Heathrow.” As there have been ongoing BA strikes, and we are travelling on United, I think nothing of it.

9:30 AM: We arrive at the client site, clear through security, and arrive at the outbuilding where we have been working. Client says, “you better check your airline – there’s been a volcanic eruption in Iceland and all flights out of Heathrow are grounded.” Of course, we immediately reply, “Volcano – hahaha!!” After been convinced that it was, in fact, not a joke, we immediately get on the phone with United Global Services (thanks, Tiffany, for being a Global Services member!!).

9:45 AM: Global Services informs us that our 7:55 AM Friday flight has been cancelled, because the plane can’t leave Dulles to get to Heathrow to pick us up. We reschedule on the Friday afternoon flight.

3:00 PM: We leave the client site and head back to London for a round of afternoon meetings with our UK co-counsel. On the way, we make contact with the travel agent (“Steve”) that usually makes our arrangements. He tells us that the Friday afternoon flight is cancelled, and that all of United’s Saturday flights have already been grabbed. Time to escalate. Steve grabs the last United flight to the States on Sunday, which goes from Heathrow to Chicago. He also books us on a BA flight on Saturday. (Most airlines now have sophisticated search engines that troll the reservation systems looking for duplicate reservations. These search engines cancel anything that looks like seat squatting. The only way to hold multiple seats for a single leg is to do so on different airlines.)

6:00 PM: Meetings with UK co-counsel complete. We head back to the hotel to strategize and grab supper. Get the news that Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt are going to close, but that Madrid and Rome are still flying. We begin the genesis of a contingency plan.

Friday April 16

9:00 AM: I wake up to an email from Carey saying that our Saturday BA flight is cancelled, and that all flights are grounded through noon on Saturday. We start to get serious about studying prevailing wind patterns in Northern Europe. Tiffany becomes an expert in geophysics – will the eruptions continue? Her sources say yes. It also becomes apparent that the National Air Traffic System (NATS) has no clue how long this will last, but is only extending the flight caps by six hours at a time in order to avoid creating major panic.

9:15 AM: Tiffany and I spend about 90 minutes discussing contingencies and options. Both of us are reluctant to do anything drastic while we are still holding the Sunday flight from London to Chicago. We call our travel agency, who books us on a Monday BA flight direct from London to Dulles. My credit card is becoming warm to the touch.

11:15 AM: Tiffany and I have a combined 5 kids 5 and under, so we head out to Hamley’s for some travel gifts.

4:00 PM: We huddle again at our hotel for a period of intense meteorogical analysis and logistics planning. Things aren’t looking good, so we start talking about getting out of London.

6:00 PM: Head over to British Museum. The British Museum, in addition to being a fantastic repository of priceless relics, is also a memorial to a time when the Brits didn’t think twice about taking historical treasures from other countries just because they could. I miss the good old days.

10:00 PM – Just on the off chance that the flight groundings continue, I reserve two seats on the Eurostar train leaving London on Monday afternoon. I want something in hand in case things get a lot worse.

Carey's Perspective:

JD was on a business trip to the U.K. He left on Monday, April 12 and was due to return on Friday, April 16. Up until Thursday, the week was actually pretty easy. The “big” kids were in school, so I got a bit of a break during the mornings, and Isabel is pretty easy. On Thursday, I bounced out of bed with a little more of a hop in my step because JD was coming home the next day. I turned on the radio to listen to the weather, and the very first thing I heard was of “chaos” in the U.K as air travel was being disrupted due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. WHAT???? No flights were leaving or entering U.K. airspace. WHAT??? So before getting in the shower, I ran downstairs to check my email and read more news to understand what was going on. The first email I had was from JD, and it read: All flights cancelled tomorrow out of Heathrow because of a volcano eruption in Iceland. Pray.

We corresponded back and forth a couple of times, and then I decided I needed to hop in the shower before the kids woke up. I started brainstorming in the shower: Why can’t he get to Paris and fly out from there? I emailed him that idea and he quickly explained that half of the U.K. had already thought of that and there were no train tickets to Paris. He and the colleague he was traveling with decided to wait it out for a bit to see what happened. They reserved plane tickets for Saturday and Sunday out of Heathrow in London, in case they could get out. Meanwhile, I started plotting an escape. Within the next few hours, airspace in France and Germany started closing, and I started thinking that they needed to head south and fast, and by south I meant get to Spain pronto before that ash cloud can get there.

There was obviously more than one problem with this, as you have to travel via train or ferry to get from the U.K to the main continent. Tickets were getting snatched left and right and options were extremely limited to non-existent. So, I started stalking travel websites in Europe, BBC and Sky News websites, and travel websites in the U.S. to see what kind of flight options were available out of Madrid, Spain.

I had trouble winding down on Thursday night, so I kept reading the news and waiting for updates about the volcanic ash. As I decided to try to sleep, I checked on the flight status of JD’s Saturday flight out of London, and it had already been cancelled. I emailed JD and just prayed that this ash would blow away.

I had a fitful night’s “rest” and called JD in the wee-hours of the morning (my time) on Friday. I started encouraging him to find a way out of London, but we were getting mixed messages from news sources and there were glimmers of hope, as some U.K airspace would open up temporarily. I tried not to dwell on the fact that JD should have been home by 2:00 pm. My sister-in-law called and offered to come over and keep me company and help with the kids. Sarah served as a great sanity preserver! By Friday night, I was in full travel agent mode, discovering multiple flights to various parts of North and South America. Meanwhile, the news out of London kept getting worse. The ash cloud was spreading throughout Europe and I was beginning to think JD might not be able to escape once he did decide to start moving. By late Friday night, JD’s Sunday flight had been cancelled. I sent him an email and slept a total of one hour that night. So, I stayed in bed and just prayed that we would find them a way to get out of Europe.